My epic 4g served me well for 10 months before the screen died out on me. I bought a new one and would like to transfer data from my old phone to my new phone, however, it seems impossible when the old phone has no screen to work with.

Any suggestions on how to retrieve this data and get it on a computer?

2 Answers
2

onik's right that ADB is your best bet for retrieving your apps, data, etc. But to get it all, you need to be rooted. XDA has an extremely simple guide for rooting that fortunately doesn't require the use of the screen, it just requires USB Debugging.

Once you root and start adb shell, try entering su before anything else. If the prompt changes from $ to # then you have root privileges. If it fails, adb probably gained root privileges automatically. Now you can access the full contents of the data partition and other areas normally off-limits.

If you have debugging enabled, you can use adb to pull files from the phone. If you can't remember the names of the files, you can use adb shell to enter the phone's shell and then browse the filesystem with normal UNIX commands, such as ls, cd dir, cd ..etc. Once you have a list of files to copy, use adb pull /sdcard/path/to/file.ext localpath/file.ext.

If you prefer to use a graphic interface, install the full SDK and Eclipse, then use the DDMS view to browse and copy files.